The TARDIS is stolen from Gatwick Airport, and the Doctor and Jamie pursue
it through a time corridor back to 1866. There, they are captured by the
Daleks, who are ostensibly trying to isolate the Human Factor, that which
makes mankind truly human. But with the help of scientist Edward
Waterfield, whose daughter Victoria is held hostage by the Daleks, the
Doctor discovers his old enemies are actually searching for the Dalek
Factor... which they intend to imprint upon every human in history.

Production

On November 1st, 1966, midway through recording on Patrick Troughton's
debut Doctor Who adventure, The Power Of The
Daleks, Dalek creator Terry Nation approached the BBC about
spinning his creations off into their own television series. This would
spotlight the Space Security Service and their top agent, Sara Kingdom,
both of whom had been created by Nation for The
Daleks' Master Plan. Other characters would include Sara's brother
David, Captain Jason Corey, and an android named Mark Seven. Nation
provided a pilot script, entitled The Destroyers, and suggested
that the Dalek programme should be made on film, with a view to beginning
production on December 12th.

Unfortunately for Nation, his proposal was rejected by the BBC on November
22nd. Consequently, Nation turned his attention to the American market,
and tried to interest NBC in the idea. The BBC therefore elected to take
the Daleks out of Doctor Who, and so a final showdown between the
Doctor and his archenemies from Skaro was envisioned for the final story
of Season Four. As with The Power Of The
Daleks, Nation was too busy to write the serial, but consented to
David Whitaker tackling the job.

Originally, the Doctor travelled back to the year 20,000
BC and retrieved a caveman named Og

Whitaker submitted a brief outline of his proposed adventure, simply
called “The Daleks”, on January 4th, 1967. Over the next few
months, this would undergo some radical revisions, especially to the
latter half of the plot. Originally, the Doctor and Edward Waterfield were
to travel back to Earth in the year 20,000 BC and retrieve a caveman named
Og, from whom the Doctor is to deduce the essence of humanity. The Daleks'
plan was to eradicate this quality from every generation of man, thereby
eliminating Earth as a threat. Meanwhile, Jamie and Victoria were held
hostage on Skaro. The character of Bob Hall was initially called Bill, and
was a gangster. Anne Waterfield -- probably Victoria's mother -- also
featured in the plot in the early stages of its gestation. Whitaker was
formally commissioned for Serial LL, now known as The Evil Of The
Daleks, on January 24th.

Around this time, producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis
decided to write Ben and Polly out of Doctor Who. Although
Whitaker's original storyline had included the characters throughout the
adventure, the writer was asked to eliminate the pair from the final five
installments, as Craze and Wills' contracts only ran to part two. Whitaker
was also asked to develop a suitable new female companion; a similar
request was made of David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke, who were writing the
preceding serial, The Faceless Ones -- the
idea being that it would give the production team a choice of potential
new regulars. To this end, Whitaker expanded Victoria's role. Lloyd and
Davis subsequently decided that Ben and Polly would make their exit in The Faceless Ones, and so the characters were
written out of The Evil Of The Daleks altogether.

By March, it had been decided that Samantha Briggs, the character invented
by Ellis and Hulke for The Faceless Ones,
would become the Doctor's latest companion. These plans had to be
discarded, however, when the actress cast as Samantha, Pauline Collins,
declined Lloyd's offer. Whitaker's creation, Victoria Waterfield, was
therefore named as the series' new regular, and auditions got under way in
late March. On April 11th, the role was won by Denise Buckley, who had
appeared in an episode of The Prisoner. Although Buckley accepted
the part, plans soon changed and two days later, Deborah Watling was cast
instead.

Watling had been acting since she was a child, having appeared in
programmes such as HG Wells' The Invisible Man, The
Newcomers and Out Of The Unknown. It was her starring role in
the BBC's 1965 production Alice -- about author Lewis Carroll --
which brought her to Davis' attention, however. A promotional picture of
Watling as Alice Liddell had appeared on the cover of the Radio
Times, and this was noticed by Davis, who mentioned Watling's name to
Lloyd. Watling had auditioned for the role of Polly a year earlier, but
was dismissed by Lloyd, who felt she was too young. Watling was contracted
for the final six episodes of The Evil Of The Daleks on April
17th.

On April 13th, Michael Peacock suggested that a new
programme called Bonaventure might replace
Doctor Who

Meanwhile, on April 5th BBC1 Controller Michael Peacock had indicated that
Doctor Who would return for a fifth season in the autumn, although
a request to change the venue of studio recordings from Lime Grove back to
the more modern Riverside Studios -- where the show had been taped between
late 1964 and mid-1966 -- was denied. On the 13th, however, Peacock
backtracked somewhat when he suggested that a new programme called
Bonaventure, recommended by Head of Serials Shaun Sutton, might
take the place of Doctor Who in 1968. In the event,
Bonaventure would not survive past its pilot episode.

The director assigned to The Evil Of The Daleks was Derek Martinus,
who had handled The Tenth Planet at the start
of the current recording block. Production began with location material,
which was captured on April 20th, 21st, 24th and 25th. The venue for most
of the filming was Grim's Dyke Mansion House at Harrow Weald, Middlesex.
At the time a rehabilitation centre, Grim's Dyke had once been the home of
Sir William Gilbert, one half of the famous playwright team of Gilbert and
Sullivan. Martinus used the building itself to stand in for Maxtible's
mansion, and also set some of the 1966 scenes on its grounds. Unusually,
recording at Grim's Dyke on the 24th involved night filming for the fight
scene between Jamie and Kemel. The 21st was not spent at Grim's Dyke,
but at the hangars on Kendal Avenue in Ealing for the sequences at
Gatwick Airport, and at Warehouse Lane in Shepherd's Bush for the scene
at the railway arches.

Filming at the Ealing Television Film Studios then took place from April
26th to 28th; two extra days were subsequently scheduled for May 16th and
17th due to the enormity of the workload. This mainly involved the civil
war on Skaro, although some material at Maxtible's mansion was also
enacted. In particular, the scenes of the Doctor and a Dalek watching
Jamie's trials were all filmed at this time, to enable Patrick Troughton
to take a holiday while episode four was recorded in the studio; this was
the only vacation Troughton received during Season Four.

Martinus was asked by Head of Drama Sydney Newman to provide some
indication that The Evil Of The Daleks did not necessarily witness
the utter annihilation of the Daleks -- anticipating the possibility that
the BBC might one day wish to bring back the monsters. Martinus obliged by
showing the Dalek Emperor clinging to life in its final scene. Production
assistant Timothy Combe assisted Martinus during some of the filming,
marking Combe's first opportunity to direct.

Jo Rowbottom, cast as Mollie Dawson, had auditioned for
the role of Victoria

Recording at Lime Grove Studio D began on May 13th. As usual, episodes
would be taped on consecutive Saturdays. May 20th marked Watling's debut
in the studio; another actress who had auditioned for the role of
Victoria, Jo Rowbottom, was cast as Mollie Dawson. Troughton enjoyed his
week off when part four was made on June 3rd; coincidentally, Watling was
also absent on this day as her lone scene had been captured on film.

The Evil Of The Daleks was the final Doctor Who serial on
which Gerry Davis was credited as story editor. With Lloyd also preparing
to move on, Davis had been offered the post of producer but declined, and
so his assistant, Peter Bryant, was being groomed for the top job. It was
originally planned that Bryant would serve as an associate producer on
The Evil Of The Daleks, as he had on The
Faceless Ones, but it was later agreed that he would officially
succeed Davis as of episode four. Victor Pemberton, who had appeared on
screen in The Moonbase, was brought in to
assist Bryant.

Davis would continue to work as a scriptwriter and story editor, creating
the cautionary series Doomwatch with Kit Pedler. He also
contributed two further serials to Doctor Who: The Tomb Of The Cybermen (cowritten with
Pedler), which immediately followed The Evil Of The Daleks into
production, and Revenge Of The Cybermen, made
in 1975. Beginning in the Seventies, Davis started working in the United
States, writing for programmes such as The Bionic Woman and
Captain Power and The Soldiers Of The Future, as well as the
feature film The Final Countdown. Davis also taught screenwriting
at UCLA in California. In the early Nineties, Davis and Terry Nation
joined forces to pitch for a new, independently-produced series of
Doctor Who, although nothing would come of this. Davis died of
cancer on August 31st, 1991.

The broadcast of The Evil Of The Daleks part seven on July 1st
brought to a close Doctor Who's fourth season on television. This
story was one of Troughton's favourites, and in the Eighties he would even
bandy about the idea of it being made into a feature film. The production
block, however, would continue with The Tomb Of The
Cybermen, which would be held over to start Season Five.
Nonetheless, the Doctor Who team had finally escaped the spectre of
making each episode just a week ahead of broadcast as had been the case
since The Underwater Menace in January -- a
perilous situation which, thanks to the skill of those involved, had not
come back to haunt the show.